Netflix Vs. Amazon: Who Won Sundance?

Last year’s Sundance Film Festival was quite the consequential one for the two streaming giants, Amazon and Netflix. In particular for Amazon, it was the start of big success, since that’s where they acquired Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Seaand began its march that would ultimately take it into history as the first Best Picture nominee from a streaming outlet. It was the result of a shrewd series of acquisitions last year that set Amazon apart from the pack.

If you look at last year’s Sundance purchases, it was a tale of two streaming platforms: Netflix went in for quantity, aggressively gobbling up seven titles, including a couple big price tags: a reported $5 million for Tallulah and $7 million for The Fundamentals of Caring, neither of which made much of an impact at all on the year’s cinema. Meanwhile, Amazon spent where it counted — $10 million for Manchester by the Sea — and then picked up a bunch of smaller movies at a bargain, like Love & Friendship, Wiener-Dog, and Author: The JT LeRoy Story.

This year looks to be shaping up as another possible quality-versus-quantity situation, with Netflix buying lots and spending lots, while Amazon hopes for one big hit.

Amazon

Aside from documentaries Long Strange Trip (about the Grateful Dead) and City of Ghosts (about ISIS), Amazon is looking to a trio of pickups to make their Sundance a success. The best reviewed of these is The Big Sick, written by Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon and based on their real-life relationship, and starring Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan. The reviews were uniformly excellent, critics calling it a crowd-pleaser, smart, and beautiful. Currently sitting on a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, and having been purchased for a reported $12 million, it’s safe to call The Big Sick the jewel of Amazon’s Sundance crown.

photo: Sundance Institute

Amazon also acquired Landline from the team behind 2014’s Obvious Child, writer/director Gillian Robespierre and star Jenny Slate. The film, set in 1995 (hence the phone-focused title), is a family-dysfunction tale about two sisters (Slate and Abby Quinn) and their parents (Edie Falco and John Turturro) after the girls appear to have uncovered proof of their father’s infidelity. Obvious Child was the kind of indie breakthrough that heralds something bigger down the road, but Sundance critics were a bit more mixed on this one.

They were also mixed on Crown Heights, writer/director Matt Ruskin’s true-life story about a man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit in the titular Brooklyn neighborhood in 1980. The lead character of Colin Warner is played by Atlanta star LaKeith Stanfield, and former NFL star Nnamdi Asomugha co-stars and produces. But while critics were lukewarm on the film (while praising Stanfield’s performance), it was apparently more popular with the filmgoers, who voted it as the audience-award winner. This puts Crown Heights in the company of films like Whiplash (great!), Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (hey, fine!), and The Birth of a Nation (hrm…).

If the new measuring stick for Amazon Studios is Manchester by the Sea, the truth is that their 2017 haul doesn’t appear to have an equivalent. It’s easy to say in hindsight that you saw Manchester by the Sea coming, but judging by director Kenneth Lonergan’s pedigree, there was reason to be hopeful. At any rate, they’re big shoes for a movie like The Big Sick to fill, especially when you consider that director Michael Showalter’s previous film, Hello My Name Is Doris proved to be too small to reap awards.

Netflix

Like last year, Netflix bought a LOT up there in Park City, from documentaries like Casting JonBenet and Nobody Speak (the Gawker v. Hulk Hogan/Peter Thiel doc) and Icarus (about Olympic doping) to streaming rights for the comedy Fun Mom Dinner and the drama Berlin Syndrome to The Incredible Jessica James starring former Daily Show contributor Jessica Williams. One of the highest profile purchases was the anorexia drama To the Bone from writer/director Marti Noxon (UnREAL; Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and starring Lily Collins in a performance that’s being reviewed well enough that Netflix could push for awards for her at year-end if they decide that’s something they want to do.

But the big news over the weekend was that Netflix shelled out $12.5 million for Mudbound, the new film from director Dee Rees (Pariah; Bessie). It’s a sprawling WWII-era drama about families and land and racism and history, all the things you’d expect to see in a big year-end awards contender, and it stars Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Garrett Hedlund, and Jason Mitchell (who was so good as Easy E in Straight Outta Compton). Mudbound was second only to director Luca Guadagnino’s gay summer-of-lust movie Call Me by Your Name, which sold to Sony Pictures Classics before the festival began,when it came to Sundance buzz this year. There was NOTHING like Mudbound in Netflix’s shopping cart last year (they tried to outspend Fox Searchlight for The Birth of a Nation, but Nate Parker turned them down), and if there’s any one movie acquired by either streaming company that’s kicked up the kind of enthusiasm that could last until next winter, it’s Mudbound. The question now becomes whether Netflix knows what to do with it. Amazon scored big with Manchester in part because they opened in theaters just like any other studio would. If Netflix sticks to their usual release pattern of direct-to-streaming, one wonders if Mudbound will be doomed to the same Oscar-less fate as Beasts of No Nation a year ago.

Of course, Netflix had a few other irons in the fire as well, having brought some of the movies they already own the rights for to the festival as premieres. By far the best received of these was director Macon Blair’s I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which took home the coveted Grand Jury Prize for U.S. dramatic features. The film stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood as neighbors who embark on a byzantine quest to find the people who burglarized Lynskey’s home. Rapturously received by critics (94% on Rotten Tomatoes), the film is set to premiere on Netflix on February 24th.

The Verdict

The one-two punch of Mudbound and I Don’t Feel at Home… makes me want to give this one to Netflix. The Grand Jury Prize winner and one of the two most talked-about movies at the festival is major. Amazon’s going to need The Big Sick to perform like more than just a lovable indie dramady.

In many ways, it’s all going to come down to those big-ticket items. Amazon shelled out $12 million for The Big Sick. Netflix went to $12.5 million for Mudbound. If either one of them can transfer the enthusiasm drummed up in the thin air of the Rockies to sea-level huzzahs, they’ll be a big feather in the cap of their respective platform. The bar was set pretty high last year. It’ll be a huge victory if either one of these services can clear it.